personal6

17

June 25, 3000

Federated Suns

Crusis March

Cholis System

Nadir Jump Point

Captain Varenda watched from the bridge of the Purple Mushroomvia a wall screen as he sat within the rotating gravity disc that had been added to the reworked Mule-class dropship as an unaugmented Morten Union-class docked with the first of the two jumpships the mercenaries were supposed to be turning over to them. The two patched up Lion's Teeth Overlord-class dropships were waiting further off, packed to nearly full with mechwarriors and recovered naval crew that badly needed to get to the jumpships to spread out, but until Captain Varenda gave them the go ahead they didn't dare move to any of the other 5 jumpships waiting near, but not too near each other.

The big one in the center of the formation was Star Lord-class, and had carried the now destroyed warship here. It was a pity the First Lord hadn't gotten the mercenaries to give them that one, but two Merchant-class jumpships was nothing to disregard, especially ones that had been upgraded with batteries to allow a second emergency jump if needed. They were essential if you were going into enemy territory and not planning on sticking around, and as such almost every well-off military unit using them had paid the high price for the upgrade while common traders preferred the cargo space the batteries would occupy.

The current Morten fleet of jumpships had 23, plus the Sequoia that was presently sitting at Drymo sucking up exports, so adding two more Merchants to the fleet was significant, and Stephan had impressed on him in a private conversation to make sure the mercenaries didn't pull any tricks…and if they did, to shoot up as much of their stuff as possible before they jumped out.

But right now all 6 of their jumpships were here, plus two more Morten jumpships sitting some 410,000 kilometers away on the 'upside' of the jump point center. The mercenary mechs were on the 'downside,' which meant the way gravity pulled you once you entered since a jump point wasn't in an orbit and you'd start moving immediately upon arriving. Normally ships let themselves be dragged downside a certain distance before engaging their station-keeping engines to clear the center of the zone where almost all jumpships entered, but the Morten jumpships had kept well clear of the mercenaries and had been gaining distance away from them ever since they'd arrived, ready to jump out of the system if need be if the mercenaries came their way.

But they hadn't, and the jumpships were just sitting there staring at each other over a great distance as the first handover began taking place. Captain Varenda would not have wanted to be the ship's Captain that was getting the boot, for the entire crew was being swapped out and would be taken over to the Star Lord shortly by the Morten dropship, then the process would be repeated with the second Merchant.

It didn't take long before the Hazel Pearldetached and started moving towards the large mercenary ship, and almost immediately the Captain got a signal from the Merchant.

"How do things look?" he asked the image of Captain Longton when it appeared on a smaller screen on the console before him.

"Nothing obviously wrong, but I've got our boys going over everything with a magnifying class. Unless there are stowaways, all the mercs are off the ship…which I believe now gets rechristened as the Far Strider?"

"Affirmative. The other will be the Very Far Strider," Varenda said deadpan.

It took Captain Mattis a moment to catch the joke, then he laughed unguardedly. "Are we allowed to complain about the choice of names?"

"Not when they come from the boss."

"What is the other one going to be called?"

"Horizon Strider, I believe."

"Well, the names are what we make them, I guess," Mattis said with a shrug. "I'm just glad to get a ship of my own. The advancement potential of the Morten Protectorate is quite astounding. I'd still have been a Major back in the AFFS by this point at best, with another 10 years minimum before I had a chance of commanding a military dropship, let alone a jumpship. The scuttlebutt is we're converting them all into Jolly Rogers. Is that true?"

Varenda nodded. "At least minimal weapons added to all jumpships. I have no idea when you'll get any upgrades. What does yours have on it now?"

"Looks like they added a couple of AC 10s and a Large Laser, mech grade. Is that enough to count as a Jolly Roger or just a meteor shooter?" he asked, referring to the practice of making jumpships into quasi-warships by stacking weapons on them, despite the fact they weren't built for it and didn't have the reactor power necessary for a proper warship's arsenal. Everything a jumpship collected via the solar sails was saved for the jump engine…and you did not want to pick a fight with someone when your sails were out, so direct powering of weapons was not an option. And there was only so much you could store within batteries. Warships had large fusion reactors, the same as mechs, to supply a continual amount of power. Jumpships required one massive burst, too much for a fusion reactor to yield, but over the long haul the fusion reactor would put out more power. Hence the warships used those for weapons.

Which was also why warships were not made with jump drives…at least not since the Star League days, because the jump drive was so huge and ate up so much power, you didn't have room for a lot of other stuff…like real engines. All the jumpships had was small engines capable of trolling them around a jump point and negating the star's pull. Mattis might finally have had a ship of his own, but it was basically a glorified space station that could move from system to system. Dropships were the ones that saw all the combat and strange new worlds they got to land on.

"Not enough to stop a standard Union from forcibly docking," Varenda said apologetically. "But enough to keep a few aerospace fighters away."

"I'll take what I can get then," he said, still impressed with his new command. "But we aregoing to have to redecorate."

"How bad is it?"

"I'll let you know after we get it cleaned. There's no trash laying around, but everything is dusty or grimy functional. No pride in their work, apparently."

"I hope the engines are better maintained."

"Same here," Mattis said as both Captains noticed an alert as a nearby flash of radiation occurred, marking the arrival of a new jumpship at the center point. It was a big one…a Leviathan that was some 760 meters long compared to the 320 of their newly acquired Merchants, and it also sported 8 docking ports instead of the Merchant's two.

Its IFF identified it as the Carnal Supplicant…which was a far worse name than the Far Strider…and it was the last of the regular trade route jumpships to pass through Cholis before they stopped coming. This one had gone out to Polvice, then Foniss, then headed back again currently carrying 6 dropships, one of which disengaged and started heading to the planet as a comm light flashed on Captain Varenda's terminal, indicating the receipt of a message packet using Morten codes.

"Hold a moment, we've got something."

"Bad news?" Mattis wondered, knowing that any jumpship passing between systems often carried messages for a small fee rather than having to send your own courier ships every time.

Varenda opened the packet and decrypted it, with his face going blank, then a satisfied nod.

"Polvice got hit too. Most of their mechs got to ground, but all 4 of their dropships were captured by the fleet. None of them made it out of the system. We lost 6 six mechs and two mechwarriors, but all of the mercenaries were taken down or captured onboard the dropships."

"Did we lose any birds?" Mattis asked, knowing there were 6 aerospace fighters stationed at Polvice.

"It doesn't mention any, so I assume no."

"Well, they did far better than we did here then."

"I wonder how many other systems got hit?" Varenda wondered, knowing the message packet was being transmitted broadly, and once it reached the planet Lords Stephan and Vander would get it without Varenda having to pass it on, but he made sure to transfer it into a secure file just in case with the press of a few buttons.

"Different mercenary unit too," he added, reading further into the details of the full mission report. "Smaller one. Didn't get the jumpships though. They had batteries and just jumped right back out. This was a raid."

"Looks like a full-blown war then," Mattis said reluctantly. "They're not going to stop because we held them there."

"No, I don't think so. Not if they're hitting elsewhere. They probably want the entire Protectorate destroyed."

"That's pretty much what Lord Vander said earlier."

"But why not combine that unit with this one and hit Cholis together for better effect?"

"Maybe they thought that warship would be enough to win it here."

"Or they're in a rush to take us down everywhere so we don't have anywhere to evacuate to."

"If that's the plan, they screwed up if Polvice held that easy."

"I agree. So does that mean they back off or send more?"

"I really want that Jolly Roger package added ASAP," Mattis reiterated.

"I don't blame you," Varenda said, reading further…and seeing just how damn vital the pocket warships had been. Glorified shuttle pilots his ass! They'd taken out an entire dropship filled with battlemechs before it even reached the Polvice, then got the other three on the way out.

He hoped Lord Vander saw this and decided to build a lot more of them rather than more mechs. Get the navy strong enough and you wouldn't even have to fight on the ground. And after the costly battle with the Lion's Teeth warship that was now little more than a scrap heap waiting to be picked apart for salvage, he thought the Mortens would get the clue. And this report from Polvice should seal the deal.

Let others be mech glory hounds. It was the navy that determined the fate of planets. And with a big enough one, the Mortens could stop even the Federated Suns from landing its tens of thousands of mechs. It was the one giant weakness the Inner Sphere had…disrespecting the naval, and even aerial, components of warfare in favor of the mechs.

If the Morten Protectorate was going to survive past infancy, it was going to have to do it with naval power. They just needed a lotmore of it, and in a hurry, for only four planets had pocket warships guarding their jump points and one asteroid field. That left 13 planets exposed.

If they could hold the new dropship factory on Drymo, it was going to be the key to building a proper fleet. For they had no capable shipyards yet that could construct a full warship. And fortunately, few in the Inner Sphere ever bothered to build them. Comstar had found one mercenary unit that had one. If they found another, and sent it here soon, they probably wouldn't be able to hold it off a second time.

Every day mattered now, and grabbing these two mercenary jumpships was a smart move by the First Lord. But it was the pocket warships they needed, and with the trade route apparently ending and other traffic starting to dry up, he didn't know how many weapon systems they could actually make on their own right now. And you couldn't convert existing dropships into warships without procuring all that weaponry and spare parts.

Varenda was glad his Hazel Mushroom had come through the fighting without any hull breaches, though he'd lost several weapons in the fighting that couldn't be repaired. They'd have to be replaced with new ones from somewhere…but he had enough others online to smoke both of the mercenary dropships if need be before they could flee the system.

And so far they were just sitting there content as the second Morten dropship headed for the other Merchant jumpship they were about to claim. If everything went off without a hitch, this would be over within an hour and a half, and he'd be glad to see this mercenary scum leave the system with their tail tucked between their legs…

Carrol Davion had grabbed a ride up to the Carnal Supplicant, given the fact that it had been hired by House Davion to run this route and hadn't yet been called off, with a lighter load of cargo than expected. The shipments from Cholis that were going out to the Inner Sphere…mainly small items…had been destroyed at the spaceport when its warehouses had been hit. The larger ore canisters from the local mining company, as well as silos of Morten materials, had been spared for the most part, and only because the mercenaries had wanted to loot them later.

The Ambassador-at-Large had told Stephan Morten that she needed to go back to New Avalon and tell them what had happened here, for Comstar was still blocking all communications, making her entirely useless now that Stephan had completely stopped caring about protocol and was running the city while Duke Alliz sat and whined about it. A lot of people were homeless now that had survived the bloodbath, and the Duke had pretty much just shrugged it off without doing anything to help, still pissed that his militia survivors had ran…and now joined the Morten mech forces permanently. One of them had gone on a public tirade excoriating the former Colonel for his lack of brains in ordering a group of light mechs to stand their ground against the mercenaries.

And for her part, she couldn't disagree. She'd never seen a worse Duke in her life, especially given that the Mortens had saved the city and his own ass. He was showing no gratitude at all, making demands he couldn't enforce…and for what? Did he expect a pat on the back from Ian after all of this?

Carroll rode the dropship with the ore cargo up to the jumpship, then suffered through the long process of heading back across the Inner Sphere. She transferred jumpships twice to try and speed things up when able, but it was still 4 months and 8 days before she was finally heading down to the surface of New Avalon in a dropship, landing near her parents' home in Westbridge, then having to travel overland another three hours to get to their estate.

She didn't contact anyone enroute, nor announce her arrival, not knowing who was going to block her access to Ian or help her. So she ended up on the doorstep of the home she'd grown up in, ringing the doorbell and setting herself for a reunion she didn't particularly want to have…but she had no one else to turn to that she could fully trust within House Davion.

A longtime servant answered, smiling widely as he recognized her.

"Carroll! Oh my dear, welcome back," Miles said, throwing the door open wide. "Where are your bags?"

She hefted the single suitcase in her left hand. "I had to travel light."

Miles took it from her immediately. "Come in, come in. Your mother is in the garden, I believe. Your father is away at the moment."

"Thanks," she said, already feeling the tension building as she headed through the 'small' estate given Davion standards, though it was quite large compared to other noble families' and dwarfed the original mansion the Mortens had bought. Her parents were part of the 'second circle' in House Davion, meaning not part of the 'inner circle' that had direct access to the First Prince, but it meant they were well involved in any House Davion internal affairs, and while her father was the bloodline connection, her mother had worked her way into House politics quite well on her own.

Carroll found her in the central courtyard, bending over a fence as she discussed the proper way to plant something with one of the gardeners. Her daughter waited patiently until Nora Davion finally stood up and noticed her with a shock.

"Hello, mother."

"When did you get here?" she asked, almost at a loss of breath.

"I just arrived. I would have sent a message, but I couldn't risk it. Bad things are happening on Cholis, and Comstar is involved. I don't know how to get a report through to Ian without it being blocked. I need help," she said flatly.

Her mother hurried over to her and grabbed her by the elbow, dragging her out of the sunlight and back into the house, closing the door to the garden so they could speak in private.

"You shouldn't be here."

"I know you're still mad at me, but I had to…"

"No," Nora said in a hard voice. "It's not safe for you here. House Morten has become verboten."

Carroll's face screwed up. "Meaning what?"

"There's no such thing as House Morten as far as the Federated Suns is concerned. And if there isn't, how can there be a liaison officer to them?" she said, her voice dripping with lethal warning. "Your life was in danger the moment you came back here."

"From who?" she demanded.

"Our own House," Nora said with shame. "Your father and I know how to play the game, so we're fine. But you can't shut your goddamn mouth for ten seconds. You came back here to make a ruckus, didn't you?"

"Cholis was attacked, Mother. And Comstar shut down all communications. They're in on it."

"I don't want to hear it," she said, raising up a palm to her daughter's face. "Cholis doesn't exist anymore. No one will officially speak of it, and it's no longer on the map. The only ones who dare are the tabloids, citing the heroic death of House Morten as they protected the Duke long enough for him to make his escape and everyone else on the planet was killed by raiders. It's a ghost planet now and not worth recolonizing."

"That's bullshit!"

The palm came back up again. "I know it is. That's a plant. They wouldn't dare print anything given the current state of affairs. Everyone is playing along or they're disappearing. I've seen this happen twice before in my life. You don't ask questions, and if you do you're punished or disappeared yourself."

"Is this coming from Ian?" Carroll asked, not believing what she was hearing.

"Hardly," she said with a disappointed look at her daughter's lack of political acumen. "He's so young and inexperienced he doesn't know 10% of what's going on in his realm, and he won't until he grows up and takes control. Our House is running things, and a lot of things right under his nose. I don't have proof of what he knows, but I can bet you everything I own that he's not directing this. Someone wants the Mortens erased from history, and you're a living monument to their existence. Do you understand what I'm saying, daughter?" she scolded.

Carroll looked at her hard. "You're saying our own House is going to try to kill me."

"There, you do have a brain behind that mouth. So why did you come here?"

"Why do you think I knew any of this before coming!" she shouted back, not caring whether the servants heard her or not.

Her mother seemed taken aback for a moment, but just a moment. "I assumed you had been approached quietly and refused to cooperate."

"I got on the next available jumpship out of Cholis after the Lion's Teeth Legion attacked the planet with two Regiments and a warship, mother. They brought a fucking warship, and House Morten fought them off. It was no raiders. It was a hired contract, and Comstar hired them. They want House Morten dead because they found something on them in the Periphery. Stephan wouldn't tell me what it was, but it was related to pirates and political prisoners. Cholis isn't gone. They held, then I came here to report what I could, not through Comstar even if they unblocked communications, for they'd never let it through, or not let it through unaltered. I have a duty to report this to Ian."

"Oh my god!" her mother said, turning around and throwing her hands in the air making a full circle. "Your duty! They're going to kill you, Carroll. If Cholis is really still there, that makes this even worse. They have to clamp down hard on any news coming out of there, and you're the poster girl for House Morten."

"That doesn't relieve me of my duty. Ian has never taken me off the assignment…at least not before the blackout went into place."

"And you stupidly think that matters! Do you expect your assassin to present his credentials first?"

"Whose assassin?" a voice said from another room. Both women turned and saw her father walk in carrying a briefcase, which he dropped the moment he saw Carroll.

"Hello, father," she said in full sarcastic mode now. "Care to join in?"

"When did you get here?" he asked, his voice a whisper of its normal self.

"A few minutes ago."

"Then you've got a chance," he said, rushing off into another room without saying another word.

"You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into," her mother continued on without missing a step.

"What I've got myself into? You're blaming me for this? I'm just doing my job, for fuck's sake!"

"You don't have a job anymore. They don't inform you with a fair warning ahead of time, Carroll. When they need you gone, they just make you disappear."

"I know that happens to others, but how can that happen in our own House?"

"Because you're expendable. We all are at the end of the day. Even Ian."

"So who's running things then? Comstar?"

"Why should I have to explain this to you? How the hell could you ever have been chosen as an Ambassador without realizing how the power structure works."

"Maybe because I was chosen by the guy actually in power," she spat back. "If Ian isn't that guy now, who is?"

"The same power brokers there always are. It's not one person, it's always a group. We're a small part of that group, despite our connection to you, as long as we play along. You could too, backing up whatever cover story they want…but we know you won't. You'll insist on telling the truth."

"Comstar mercenaries were destroying a city in the Federated Suns," Carroll said icily, as if her mother was a child that needed her to speak slowly to understand, "before House Morten stepped in to stop it. I think that's something the First Prince deserves to know about, and I don't think he would want to hear a lie."

"You can't get to him, and even if you could it wouldn't matter. Forces are at work here, my dear little daughter, far stronger than I've ever seen before. You won't get the chance to know who is behind this before they take you out. That's how these things go down. It's not official in any way, but it's more potent than a decree from Ian. Can you understand that?"

"Sounds like treason to me."

"In a technical way it might be, but Ian can't rule until he learns how, so our House is doing it for him."

"Did you even get a reason why this is happening?"

Nora stared at her as if she were dumb. "Do you need to look up the definition of 'verboten?'"

"No honest person can ever accept that at face value."

"This isn't an honest House. None of the Great Houses are. We all live and breathe lies. It's our currency. Why are you so poor in it?

"But you have to know they're lies," Carroll pressed, "otherwise you're just a dupe. What do you know about the behind the scenes here?"

"I know not to ask. It's that bad," she said, falling silent for a moment. "I can feel it."

"Governments are not run on feelings, mother."

"They're not run on honesty either."

"So what, they want me to lie about Cholis?"

"They want you gone, along with any and all ties to Cholis. They've taken it off the official map, Carroll. Does that not impress on you the seriousness of the matter?"

Carroll frowned. "I thought you meant that metaphorically."

"No, I didn't. It's no longer part of the Federated Suns, but there's no mention of when it stopped being a part of it. And the records of it previously existing are also disappearing. Cholis never happened. Anyone who says otherwise is going to get a visit, one way or another, from a censorship team. They either educate you on what not to say, or they take away your ability to speak entirely."

"Did one of them speak with you?"

"Not me. Your father."

Carroll's face went burnt red with anger. "They threatened him!"

"You really have no idea how this game works, do you? Despite everything we taught you!"

"I've been doing real work, mother," she said as her father came back into the hallway and grabbed her by the arm.

"Into my study."

She walked with him, then he shut the door on her mother and locked it.

"You should not be here."

"I had no way of knowing about any of this."

Her father shook his head. "I know. You weren't supposed to know. They probably hoped you were killed in the fighting."

"What do you know of it?"

"I know that if the planet really was dead, there wouldn't be any provisions on people going there. What actually happened?"

"Comstar. House Morten has something on them, and they're trying to wipe them out. They shut down the Cholis relay citing technical malfunctions for a couple months. It was still down when I left. I couldn't try to send a message through them even if it came back up. I had to come in person."

"And the planet?"

"Attacked, but House Morten defended and held."

"How many mechs attacked?"

"Two Regiments of mercenaries and a warship."

Her father blanched. "Where would mercenaries get a warship?"

"A few have them, not many. Only the larger groups. The warship was destroyed by a fleet of dropships. It was bad, but the mech forces fared better. House Morten still has at least a Regiment on planet, but they're getting hit on other worlds too. Polvice at least. There may be more that I didn't stick around long enough to learn about. Smaller attack, though, and they held."

"Do you know who hired them?"

"No proof, but it was Comstar. House Morten is certain of it."

"And what do they have on them?"

"He wouldn't say, but it involved a captured pirate that was holding political prisoners for them."

"For Comstar?"

"Yes."

"Was one of them a high ranking Capellan?"

"I have no idea. I didn't see them and he didn't name them."

"One we thought dead suddenly showed back up. A childhood tutor to Maximilian. And there have been a few other notable people of lesser stature coming back from the grave here and in the Free Worlds League. I was made aware of that before all this started to happen."

"What is happening, exactly?"

"Information purge. Something so critical it's being expunged using all measures possible. They will kill you if they know you're here. I'm surprised you made it this far."

"Because I know the truth?"

"And because they know you won't conceal it. But they'd probably kill you anyway to be on the safe side."

"They can't hide an entire planet, father. Jumpships will still come and go as long as he has a mech factory."

"Every new planet you charted is also being eliminated. There is no Morten Protectorate, at least not on New Avalon and anywhere official. People in the Periphery might not be shielded from it, but anywhere near polite society it simply doesn't exist. It can't exist. And anyone that breaches that unspoken rule will pay the price."

"Who is doing this? Does Comstar really control our House this much?"

"A mixed bag, as far as I've been able to tell, but I know not to press too far. I've never seen this tight a lid kept on things, even in war. They must have something huge on Comstar."

"So why aren't we worried about Comstar? They're a far bigger threat than the Mortens."

"Agreed. And some of us are. But we can't ask questions now. Somehow this has roots everywhere. If it is Comstar, we have to eliminate those roots, but it'll take time and there's no way to do it now. But I can promise you we're taking names and feeling around gently. This is not how our House behaves, Carroll. If we want to take out one of our own, there's a lot of talking that goes on first. This is a total blackout of information. That reeks of Comstar or another foreign entity."

"Is there any way to get my report to Ian?"

"Don't try. If he wants it, he can seek you out later. Right now you have to keep that information alive by keeping yourself alive. There's a dropship lifting off from Haven's Ring in 72 minutes. My driver can get you there in 63. The Captain will get you off New Avalon and set you up with contacts to help get you further. You can't come back to this planet again. Ever."

Carroll felt her neck tightening. "Just like that?"

"If I'm going to keep my daughter alive, it has to be this way. I can't protect you here," he said, grabbing a small envelope filled with Pounds. "This is all the money I have in the house. You can't use your account, personal or professional, they'll track it. And I can't send you anything for the same reason."

She took the envelop and slid it inside her jacket. "Thank you."

"It's not enough. I'm sorry I can't do more, but there's no time. They may already have someone coming for you. If you stay the night, I wouldn't guess you'd be free in the morning. And I don't want my daughter to die in an interrogation cell or any other way."

"I was just doing my job," she said, her lips quivering as the direness began to sink into her emotions now that she wasn't arguing with her mother.

"Andrew chose you well. If he was still alive, this would not be happening. Wherever you go, make a life for yourself. I can't know where or how," he said, wrapping her up in a big hug, then shoving her towards the door as he unlocked it.

Her mother was standing there holding a small box.

"Take this," she said, shoving it to her. "You'll need it."

Carroll pulled open the top and saw it full of her mother's jewelry…the most expensive pieces she had that were worth far more than the bills in her father's envelope.

"Go," her mother said, and Carroll saw a tear forming in one of her eyes before she turned and walked away.

Her father took her by the arm again and escorted her out. Not in a mean way, but making it clear she didn't have time to dilly dally. Miles barely had time to grab her bag out of the guest room and give it back to her, making it just a few steps ahead of the driver to the vehicle garage.

"Go and don't look back," her father said. "It's for the best…for you. And you can't use your real name anymore. It's a death sentence now."

"Have the Davions…always been like this?" she asked as she opened the rear passenger door, emotion now flooding into her voice so much she could barely speak.

"I've never seen it this bad, but yes. We've never been better than this."

"Then I don't want the name anymore."

"Find somewhere far away that you can prosper, my daughter. That's my hope for you now."

Carroll hugged him quickly one last time, then ducked into the luxury car and shut the door…with the driver immediately pulling out, already having been told where to go.

The now former Ambassador sank back into the seat cushions, not knowing what to do. They got four minutes into the trip and well outside the view of her family estate before she broken down sobbing behind the tinted glass barrier between her and the driver that at least gave her some measure of privacy.